I like to imagine a campus bulletin board as one monstrous organism, every pinned flyer a new flailing limb. As I walk by, it thrashes and wails at me to stop and look, that big-headed beast. Sometimes I do. There’s always something new. Apply to be a Law School summer fellow. Free stand-up comedy show last week. Public global technology lecture, art gallery video series screening, local punk rock band performance, student clothing sale, another one, another. Sometimes I even dare to disturb the creature, move one aside to read another. Lawless. A dozen people walk swiftly by.
There’s something intimate about a weathered piece of paper stapled to a board. A dozen clashing fonts, frayed edges beside fresh ink. Bold and italic attempts to entice. There is a tacit life in their accumulation, the whispered narrative of it all. Someone must make them, pin them there. Someone, then, must also take the papers down. I wonder if they go one by one, or if they rip them off in apathetic grabs, a crumpled slaughter. Here, everything is finite and urgent.
-Mahitha Ramachandran is a sophomore in Morse College.
Illustration courtesy of Alicia Gan.
